Talk show host and cultural trendsetter Oprah Winfrey is continuing her passionate quest to make texting or using a cellphone while driving considered as dangerous, and heinous, an act as drunken driving. And who better to get national attention on this life-threatening issue.
Winfrey declared last Friday, April 30, as National No Phone Zone Day. She had done a show on the topic back in January, and has ramped up her efforts to support the cause.
One of the high points of Friday’s show was when it televised Michigan Gov. Jennifer Granholm signing that state’s anti-texting bill into law. With a stroke of her pen, Granholm made Michigan the 24th state to ban texting while driving.
“We’re proud to be the 24th state now to be able to ban texting while driving,” Granholm said. “While talking on the phone is a distraction, clearly, texting while driving on top of that — where you don’t have your eyes on the road or your hands on the wheel or your mind on what you’re doing — it is clearly a danger.” http://www.freep.com/article/20100501/NEWS06/5010362/Oprah-celebrates-Mich.-texting-ban
Said Oprah, “Michigan just became a safer place because of that new law.”
There was plenty of press coverage about the signing, which may have been a non-event for newspapers until Oprah got news of the texting-ban front and forward.
Via satellite, Oprah also went live to anti-texting and anti-cellphone use rallies in Los Angeles, Detroit, Washington, D.C., Atlanta and Boston.
The Detroit coverage, hosted by actress/comedian Ali Wentworth, included not only the bill-signing, but also a clip of General Motors chairman and CEO Ed Whitacre. He announced that 77,000 of his U.S. employees will sign Oprah’s “No Phone Zone” pledge, which now has more than 200,000 names. http://www.oprah.com/packages/no-phone-zone.html
By pledging, drivers agree to make their car a “No Phone Zone” and refrain from using their phone while driving, eliminating distractions from incoming calls, texts or e-mails. Among those that have signed the pledge are Sandra Bullock, Jeff Bridges, Olympic star Sean White, Jerry Seinfeld, Oscar winners Jeff Bridges and Mo’Nique, Tyler Perry and the cast of the hit TV show “Glee.”
At the rally in Washington Secretary of Transportation Ray LaHood, who is spearheading a federal ban on texting by truckers behind the wheel, make some remarks.
Correspondent Lisa Ling lead the Los Angeles rally, interviewing celebrities who have signed Oprah’s petition for anti-texting and cellphone use laws, including Mario Lopez and last year’s “American Idol” winner Kris Allen.
Oprah, to strike home her message about the danger of distracted driving, also had the victims of motorists who were texting while driving, or using a cellphone, on her show. It was poignant, with parents talking about the deaths of their children, from a 2-year-old hit by a vehicle driven by someone texting to a beautiful teen-aged girl who crashed and flipped over her truck while texting to a friend. Her mother and father found her body.
Oprah also have a shout-out to a New York Times reporter, Matt Richtel, whose series “Driven to Distraction” just won him a Pulitzer Prize.
